PixlBit

"The Flabbergasting Years"

The flab-blasting years, perhaps. LET'S GET PHYSICAL.

There was an Earthworm Jim remake in 2010 for XBLA and PSN. Was mostly identical to the old games in terms of gameplay, but damn was it gorgeous. Personally I thought Sonic Colors was really good like the Rush games, but lacked the nonlinear level design that makes me love Sonic Mania and the Genesis games. I wanted more opportunities to experiment with the wisps to reach new areas, they felt more suited to getting past obstacles which is fine, but doesn't give me much reason to return to the levels once I beat them.

I remember hearing about the Earthworm Jim remakes, but never saw them in action. 

As for Sonic, I don't think I've ever really felt compelled to explore in those games, so linear levels really don't bother me there. 

Well it's not exploring so much as it it is how the game rewards mastering its levels. The GBA and DS games just meant you'd have a better time, lose less lives, and get a better score at the end. In the Genesis ones and Mania, getting a perfect run means you take a different path, almost to the point where it feels like playing a new level. Sometimes it means more rings, easier access to special stages, or neater setpieces, but I feel rewarded for mastering the game in a way only Genesis Sonics and Mania have accomplished in that series. It's why I can replay those games over and over but was done with all the DS and GBA Sonics the second I beat them. 

Though the games do reward you for exploring with special stages and I felt Mania had by far the best ones in the series. Had a blast with all of them and Super Sonic was much more manageable than the Genesis games. But that kind of level design is why Mania has a better reaction than Colors did, Colors had a more generic, but still good, level design while Mania went back to one of the overlooked elements that made Sonic unique and hasn't really been replicated well. 

I guess I just never felt the different paths in Sonic games made the game all that different for me. Even in Sonic CD, I just wasn't that compelled to find different pathways. Just something that doesn't really appeal to me, I guess. 

But I can see what you're saying now at least. 

We could call it "dickety." Or we could call the whole century "dickety", as in "dickety-eighteen" or in two years, "dickety-dickety."

My big games of this year were Fallout: New Vegas and Yakuza 3. F:NV was the best of the Bethesda Fallout games and combined the Bethesda graphics and gameplay engine with a lot of the best elements of the PC Fallout games.

Wasnt new vegas done by obsidian?

Yeah. They were supposed to get a bonus if NV got over an 85 Metacritic score. It got an 84 Metacritic score, and they lost the bonus. They said losing the bonus nearly killed Obsidian. It's a shame, too. NV was far and away the best of the Bethesda Fallout games, made by people who worked on Fallout 2.

Obsidian is one of my favorite developers. Their work on KOTOR2 is legendary. 

And my students complain when I give them an 88 on something ...

In all seriousness, did the 84 Metacritic score really impact sales negatively enough they couldn't hand out a bonus. I'd be intensely frustrated if I were one of the employees. 

Have you played all of the Yakuza games? I finished the story in Yakuza 0 this week, and yet the cabaret club and Real Estate Royale minigames are basically their own game-length stories, so I'm still working on those. It's insane. 

I haven't played Yakuza 1 (wasn't aware of Yakuza until long after it came out), Yakuza 5 (digital only on PS3, and mine is dead), or Dead Souls.

I'll call it my blog decade because I started blogging in 2010 on 1UP. 

I think I started on 1up around 2006, right around when the Wii was being released. 

That was a good time to get into it. 2010 things were already starting to unravel there. 

I started in '07. Right before I finally found a Wii.

i remember waiting like a year to get a Wii. 

I never played Sonic Colors.  I wanted to, I just never got around to getting it.

Do you know who my favorite Sonic characters are?

2010 was the year that WarioWare D.I.Y. came out and that was my Game of the Year that year.  But we've already talked about why, so I won't go over it again. :)

I really like it. 

I guess Tails?

What minigame won you the contest?

Tails and also Big the Cat. :)

The game I made for WarioWare D.I.Y that won was called "Feed a kitty."  You can read more about it here:

http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2010/06/12/its-official-im-developing-nintendo-games-now/

The site cannot be reached at work, but that's still really cool. 

If we're going by gaming I'm going with the Decade of DLC. I have a love/hate relationship with DLC. Also this might have been the time when I bought my first tablet. 

I think after the Sonic run with the Genesis and Dreamcast I lost track with Sonic and then all of a sudden there were a ton of different Sonic games. I honestly couldn't tell you if I played Colors or not, heck without checking Backloggery I don't even know if I own a copy. I do remember wanting a Nintendo DS at one point. 

True, but didn't DLC start being a thing last decade?

Yeah, and a lot of the post-Dreamcast Sonic games got mixed reviews at best, so I think a lot of folks dropped off at that point. 

You're probably right about DLC, but the one that got me was the songs for Rockband Unplugged on the PSP because I wanted Paramore's Crushcrushcrush. Still one of my favorite songs to play on that game.